Act­ing your age

Don’t ever be­friend some­one who re­minds you of some­one you used to be. They could turn out to be more of a some­body than you will ever be.

In this clever, ob­ser­vant and bit­ing so­cial satire from Amer­i­can writer- direc­tor Noah Baum­bach, a gen­er­a­tion gap is open­ing and closing with­out no­tice, like a bro­ken el­e­va­tor door.

Ben Stiller stars as Josh, a doc­u­men­tary fi lm­maker whose life is stalled at a cross­roads.

He and wife Cor­nelia ( Naomi Watts) are the last cou­ple left in their so­cial cir­cle who are yet to have a baby. Which means ev­ery­one in their so­cial cir­cle is telling them they should have a baby.

There is no refuge for Josh in his work. His lat­est project has chewed up al­most 10 years and he still can’t get the run­ning time un­der­neath six hours.

Josh’s re­luc­tance to com­mit to a fi nal cut has a lot to do with Cor­nelia’s fa­ther Les­lie ( Charles Grodin), who just hap­pens to be one of the most fa­mous doc­u­men­tary di­rec­tors of all- time.

Josh needs to be snapped out of his rut, and a blos­som­ing friend­ship with a younger fan of his work could be the an­swer.

Jamie ( Adam Driver) is a New York hip­ster in his mid- 20s who is hop­ing to one day fol­low Josh down the doco- mak­ing path.

For now, how­ever, Jamie and his wife Darby ( Amanda Seyfried) are living foot­loose and fancy free. Their un­tir­ing thirst for do­ing what they want, when they want, ex­erts a grav­i­ta­tional pull upon Josh and Cor­nelia.

All of a sud­den, the older cou­ple are no longer act­ing their age. Josh and Cor­nelia ditch their long­time friends and begin to get down with Jamie and Darby’s up­for- any­thing crowd.

Ev­ery­thing is go­ing so beau­ti­fully, you just know it can only end ugly. As pre­dictable as this story arc is, it is the get­ting there that re­ally counts in the case of

Stiller is in the best form he has shown for years, and he re­ally comes into his own once the tone of the movie grad­u­ally be­gins to darken, and Josh re­alises Jamie has achieved more in a month than he has in a decade.

The world as Josh thought he knew it has picked up speed, and he may never catch up again. To make mat­ters worse, Jamie looks as if he isn’t even try­ing, but he is al­ways right on the pace.